Ventura, pushing new book at HuffPost: Legalize it!
Friday, February 26, 2010 at 12:26 pm
- 6 Comments
Former Gov. Jesse Ventura hawks his forthcoming book, “American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies that the Government Tells Us,” with a column at Huffington Post today in which he decries the “staggering” hypocrisy of the Obama Administration in continuing George W. Bush’s “drug war” policies and concludes with a call to legalize pot.
In Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai’s brother is getting CIA payments while also being involved in the heroin trade, Ventura writes. And while Obama has said the drug problem needs to be looked at from a public health perspective, his “drug war” budget directs twice as much money to the criminal justice system than to treatment and prevention, he writes. He then criticizes Obama for nominating Michele Leonhart, a Bush-era appointee, as DEA director.
“She has a history of cracking down on medical marijuana dispensaries, and most recently denying the research application of a University of Massachusetts botanist, he writes. “This is a ludicrous appointment, since Attorney General Eric Holder has already ordered federal agents not to go after medical marijuana outlets. So is the administration talking out of both sides of its mouth?”
Ventura concludes with an excerpt from his book, which comes out March 8. In part, it reads:
…One hundred million Americans have sampled marijuana, and that includes almost half of all the seniors in high school. More than 35 million Americans have tried cocaine at some point, and almost as many have taken LSD or other hallucinogenic drugs. Meantime, we’ve got “grows” or “gardens” of pot springing up all across our western states on public lands–and that includes almost40 percent of national forests. About 3.1 million marijuana plants were confiscated in national forests over a one-year period, September 2007 to September 2008, carrying a street value calculated at $12.4 billion.
I mean, how stupid are we? Go back to Chicago and Prohibition, when Al Capone became more powerful than the government because we’d outlawed the selling of liquor. Legalize marijuana, and you put the cartels out of business! [...]
6 Comments
Comment posted February 26, 2010 @ 1:35 pm
I know thousands of you will deride me for this, but I don’t give a damn.
Jesse Ventura is indeed, the brain.
He has the best ideas which would actually work. No wonder every political hack hated his guts. He’s no (typical american carpetbagger) politician.
Thank you Jesse Ventura, one of my (very few) heroes.
Our nation needs your service in the presidency…
I don’t blame you for not running.
Comment posted February 26, 2010 @ 2:07 pm
Jesse is a moonbat at times, but he is spot on here. (His new TV show is one of the worst pieces of trash I have ever had the misfortune of viewing.) Look at any poll done on medical marijuana and upwards of 80% support it. All-out legalization is for the first time approaching majority support. This is mostly a generational issue, plain and simple. Those who have grown up in the “information age” have access to the facts about pot, and attitudes and perceptions are changing accordingly based on science, not “reefer madness.” The war on drugs has cost America over a TRILLION dollars with NO net return on investment. Time to end it and provide TREATMENT for those that WANT it under a harm reduction model. The war on drugs is about control, not safety.
Comment posted February 27, 2010 @ 8:40 am
The drug cartels and Big Pharma, the evil duo of drugs, will not allow a gift from God, Marijuana, to be legalized. Both will lose billions of dollars to a plant that grows for free. Let’s just skip the medical marijuana step and legalize ALL drugs. In one day it would destroy the cartels. Education is slowly destroying the tobacco market in western culture. The same should be used to destroy the drug (narcotics) market as well. As long as it is illegal we can not fight it correctly and the evil duo of cartels and Big Pharma rule.
Comment posted February 28, 2010 @ 8:59 pm
I didnt vote for jesse but I after he was gov. I approved of the way he handled most things, even though he wasn’t tactful at times. Jesse is right on this.
Pingback posted March 1, 2010 @ 12:01 am
[...] Last week, former Gov. Jesse Ventura promoted his upcoming book, American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies that the Government Tells Us, with a Huffington Post column “in which he decries the ’staggering’ hypocrisy of the Obama Administration in continuing George W. Bush’s ‘drug war’ policies and concludes with a call to legalize pot.” …One hundred million Americans have sampled marijuana, and that includes almost half of all the seniors in high school. More than 35 million Americans have tried cocaine at some point, and almost as many have taken LSD or other hallucinogenic drugs. Meantime, we’ve got “grows” or “gardens” of pot springing up all across our western states on public lands–and that includes almost 40 percent of national forests. About 3.1 million marijuana plants were confiscated in national forests over a one-year period, September 2007 to September 2008, carrying a street value calculated at $12.4 billion. [...]
Comment posted March 10, 2010 @ 9:47 pm
…Jesse, you are ‘right on’. Everything you stated – we’ve beleived frm day one! Its so SENSELESS – to ‘buy’ the HUGE farce of what all the past U. S. administration has tried to push on all of us!! ..and to BARBARA (on The View) – WHEN are you going to get ‘updated’ about the Kennedy Assas theory? – Its been accepted – by the courts SOME TIME ago — that the “ONE BULLET” reasoning – has been concluded as imposible!!!
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